CS PhD student (not at Stanford) here. Based on the survey timing, 2015 respondents were in their 3rd year when answering this survey. I have personally heard and read that 3rd year is a hard year for many PhD students (and the experiences of my peers and I largely bear this out), so the dissatisfaction here tracks with that idea.
There are many possible explanations:
1. Most people have their master's degree by third year. There's a sense of "if you're going to drop out, now is the time to do it." If you're miserable in your program but hate quitting stuff, third year might be the year that finally breaks you.
2. Coursework is largely over by 3rd year, and a student should be doing research close to full time. This can be a hard transition. Granted, most Stanford students probably have substantial research experience coming in, but even that is not the same as doing (often very unstructured) research all day every day.
3. The "honeymoon" is over. You're no longer a young student, and pressure is growing to publish, know your area, network, and so on. At the same time you're still quite junior, so you know you're probably not very good at any of these things yet. This can be a frustrating combination. Kind of like adolescence. Also, if you've been unlucky with conference reviewing, you may have a stack of 2-4 papers that have been rejected at least once or twice, and you despair of ever doing anything externally recognized as useful. In the other direction, some of your peers now have half a dozen accepted papers at good conferences, and you feel inferior (never mind that these are small sample sizes, and peer review is noisy).
So some self-selection occurs in the third year, and the group that sticks around to year four is usually smaller and happier (and, of course, some happier fourth years used to be miserable third years).
Thanks! This is definitely making sense to me. I'll bookmark this and hope they do another survey next year (and share). Looking forward to the comparison of year 2016 next year.
There are many possible explanations:
1. Most people have their master's degree by third year. There's a sense of "if you're going to drop out, now is the time to do it." If you're miserable in your program but hate quitting stuff, third year might be the year that finally breaks you.
2. Coursework is largely over by 3rd year, and a student should be doing research close to full time. This can be a hard transition. Granted, most Stanford students probably have substantial research experience coming in, but even that is not the same as doing (often very unstructured) research all day every day.
3. The "honeymoon" is over. You're no longer a young student, and pressure is growing to publish, know your area, network, and so on. At the same time you're still quite junior, so you know you're probably not very good at any of these things yet. This can be a frustrating combination. Kind of like adolescence. Also, if you've been unlucky with conference reviewing, you may have a stack of 2-4 papers that have been rejected at least once or twice, and you despair of ever doing anything externally recognized as useful. In the other direction, some of your peers now have half a dozen accepted papers at good conferences, and you feel inferior (never mind that these are small sample sizes, and peer review is noisy).
So some self-selection occurs in the third year, and the group that sticks around to year four is usually smaller and happier (and, of course, some happier fourth years used to be miserable third years).